This is one of the top three most popular Have A Laugh Friday segments, so I thought it was time to show it again. This guy is hilarious, and it is only a 30 second commercial. Count how many references he makes to the movie “Top Gun” during this clip!

It was April of 2011, and I had been writing for some time. As I reflect back now, it was well over a year that I was carrying around a notebook and writing about sales, sales management and leadership. But I was feeling lost. It felt like I was stranded on an island, wondering if my message would have meaning to anyone else. I was quickly coming to the realization that Google was “letting me down” when I needed it the most.

What I mean by that was I was having trouble finding out what I really wanted to know about sales and who the key players were. I wanted to connect with influential people in the industry, but just did not know how. Then I saw a commercial from the website www.ancestry.com and it inspired me greatly. Their tagline was,

“You don’t have to know what you are looking for, you just have to start looking.”

I was pumped up! I was going to dig deep online and search for influential people who were doing similar things do what I wanted to be doing.

Paul McCord’s fantastic website and blog not only provided great value for me, but he also had a “Blogroll”. For those who do not know, a Blogroll is a listing of favourite blogs that the author follows. It was like I had won the lottery! Many of the influential sales leaders that I follow today are on that list, and I have thanked Paul personally for enabling me to connect with a great group of people. I immediately started to follow their blogs, but it was time-consuming.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I was visiting an account for work. One of the employees was on Twitter and enjoying it a lot. I made fun of her a bit, and stated that I did not need to know every little update of celebrities and regular people. She said that I had it all wrong, and gave me a quick tutorial. I was very impressed and kicked myself that I had not joined sooner!

After work that day, I rushed home and feverishly started searching for people who I had recently discovered in the sales space. Many or them were actually on Twitter! I started to follow them. The first thing that I noticed was the time savings for following blog posts and other valuable content. As an example, if I was following ten blogs and had to go to each of their pages on a regular basis, it would take a long time. But if I was following them on Twitter, they were all updating their profiles with new tweets and I could see what was new in a fraction of the time. That was awesome!

As I progressed and became a daily Twitter user, I realized that the social interaction was becoming very beneficial to me as well. I was having a blast, and contributing daily! I must admit, trying to get my point across in less than 140 characters was a challenge, but I learned to adapt. As the list of people I followed quickly grew, I proceeded to group them in to sub lists, to keep each list of people to follow a manageable size.

LinkedIn was a website that I had previously used for job searches. I soon realized that it was much more than an HR platform. I started to connect with people in the sales space, fellow entrepreneurs, and old friends! I have now connected with close to 900 people, and am looking to add to my network daily.

Starting a Facebook fan page and joining Google+ a few months ago has provided me with other platforms to share my message on.Internet marketing leader Gary Vaynerchuk put his spin on social media during an interview with Tony Robbins once. He was posed the question about where people should be connecting with social media. His answer was a very emphatic “ALL OF THEM”. His explained the point with this analogy….

“If you were invited to several important business mixers, would you attend all of them, or just one?”

If you are attempting to spread your message to as many people as possible, the correct answer is all of them of course!

Social media has changed my life. I now know others are interested in what I have to say (which is an incredible feeling). I post my content in all the social media outlets mentioned above!

If you are looking to connect with people in your areas of interest, social media is certainly an incredible venue to do so. If you are looking to take things a step further and start, sustain and eventually grow a business, it is a must!

Most of you reading this are already connecting on social media, so congratulations! But please consider your connections that are on the fence, and send them the link of this blog post! It changed my life, and will hopefully change theirs too.

One last thing… if we are not connected on social media, I would love if you joined me at:

In sports like hockey, football and basketball, certain athletes get tagged with the name “perimeter player”. They mainly shoot from the outside, or in the case of football, only catch the ball near the sidelines. They play it safe, and stay away from the “dirty” dangerous areas. They can still score from the outside, but are missing other opportunities to score.

In sales, most well-adjusted reps have the ability to:

Sell more products to their most satisfied customers

Sell to a prospect who has all but pulled out a purchase order number and said “I’m buying!”

Take over and succeed in a territory that is already on “auto-pilot”

That would be described as perimeter play.

What about getting in to the “dirty”, dangerous areas?

These reps have the ability to:

Put together action plans and succeed in getting struggling accounts back on track

Get in front of dissatisfied customers, and fix problems face-to-face

Make difficult decisions to drop underperforming accounts that will never thrive

Succeed in spite of lack of leadership and never make excuses

My favourite analogy for this type of work is always related to hockey,
“Who is willing to go in to the corner, get hit by a bigger player, and still come out with the puck?”

The perimeter players may still have a long career, but be just average. If you are looking for average, then you must be ok playing it safe. The repeated overachiever, who is always looking to improve never hesitates and welcomes the difficult tasks on route to massive success!

Today more than ever, personal branding is incredibly important. The tools are there to stand out in very crowded niches and be game changers helping those who really need it.

I think many people undervalue their worth online in one, or multiple niches that they are working in.

Always remember that people love to work with like-minded people, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and build a kick-a** community of raving fans.

When I think of personal branding, 5 things really come to mind:

Be Yourself – Don’t try to be somebody that you are not. It rarely works, and you just look silly

Engage Others -Nothing worse than somebody putting out great content but never engaging their audience

Be Consistent – One big red flag that stands out for me when I come across a new brand is if their social media content is inconsistent, with long breaks of nothing. If you are in, you are in – show up often with high quality content

Be of Service – It is not about you, it is about your audience. Once you get the mindset of helping others, it will be a game changer. The money will be there, as long as you don’t focus on it

Start a Blog or Website With Your Name – Even if you have an existing business, it is a great idea to be branded online with your name as well. What better way to get known online than people being able to stop by “Insert Name.com”!

What does personal branding mean to you?

What struggles have you had with your brand, and what steps have you taken to make yourself a “rock star” brand now?

Many of us are trying to stand out from the crowd and do “out of the ordinary stuff”. Heck many of us are trying to do ordinary stuff but still get noticed.

Like delivering beer to people’s seats at a baseball game.

There is no way to stand out from the crowd doing that right?

WRONG!

I had the pleasure of attending a Chicago Cubs exhibition game in April of 2011, and did not realize how much of a treat I was in for from watching a beer vendor work. His coverage of our section immediately caught my attention! He was more charismatic, more outgoing, more energetic, and more fun to watch than any other beer concession worker than I had ever seen before. I caught myself watching him work more than the game itself!

But that was not even the best part. When he left our section for a bit, I followed him and we had a bit of a conversation. I was captivated by his stories of working in the industry for many years. When I left with my drinks, he gave me his “business card”. It was a laminated baseball-like card with his picture on the front working at a game. On the back it had all of his “statistics”. By statistics I mean all the venues he had worked at during his career, and events that he attended.

I still have his “business card”, and look at it from time to time to remind me what it truly means to have a well-developed personal brand.

What do you do to stand out from the crowd?

Where do you know that you can improve to increase your exposure?

Developing your personal brand is not a “when I feel like it” thing. It should be ongoing. Daily if possible.

Be memorable, be engaging, be caring and for goodness sake have some fun!

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Dynamic and energized sales rep, mentor and leader since 1999. This blog will be about sales, social networking, personal branding, leadership, music and having some laughs! Don’t be surprised if I mix it up on occasion though, and talk about something totally different! I thrive on being part of successful, forward thinking teams. I am ready to go from the moment my feet hit the floor each morning, with the expectation that new adventures will be coming my way. It is rare that there isn't a smile on my face, as I take it all in, and have some fun along the way!